USR announces that will submit a criminal complaint against the General Secretary of the Deputies’ Chamber

Save Romania Union (USR) will submit criminal complaints for abuse of office against Silvia Mihalcea, the General Secretary of the Deputies’ Chamber, and against Georgica Toba, the head of the Legislative Department, for intellectual forgery, related to the initiative “Fara penali” (“No Criminals”), announced the USR MP Stelian Ion on Thursday.

“In that information note made by a public servant from the Deputies’ Chamber, there is a false figure. The figure of 591,000 signatures is false. For this, we will file a criminal complaint against the person who drafted that document, for forgery in official documents. There was an attempt to delay this initiative. I’m talking about Mr. Toba, the head of the Legislative Department of the Deputies’ Chamber. It’s sad that public servants of the Deputies’ Chamber are caught in this game of the leadership of the Deputies’ Chamber headed by Liviu Dragnea, a person who has a criminal conviction, and accept in their turn to commit offenses to make their games”, stated the USR MP Stelian Ion on Thursday at Parliament.

In her turn, Cristina Pruna said she is waiting for clarifications from the General Secretariat of the Deputies’ Chamber.

“The General Secretariat made a note regarding the signatures that were submitted by the members of the Initiative Committee and found that only 590,097 signatures were submitted, of which almost 94,000 have some differences, erasures, corrective paste. The General Secretariat has exceeded its attributions. The General Secretariat should only make photocopies of these signatures and send them to CCR. Today, we had a discussion with the General Secretariat, because these figures they included in their report are meant to sabotage this citizens’ initiative and demonstrate that the number of signatures is actually under the threshold, which is false. We are waiting for clarifications from the General Secretariat. We submitted over 900,000 signatures, of which more than 800,000 were valid signatures certified by mayoralties”, stated the leader of the USR group in the Deputies’ Chamber, Cristina Pruna, on Thursday at the Parliament.

Deputies’ Chamber Quaestor: More than 500,000 signatures have been falsified

USR’s reaction comes after PSDMP Catalin Radulescu explained on Wednesday that a criminal complaint was submitted at the General Prosecutor’s Office against the initiative “Fara penali in functii publice” (e.n. – “No Criminals in Public Positions”), since USR falsified more than 500,000 signatures.

“Many signatures, more than 500,000 or 600,000. If they were two or three, 10 signatures, we could understand to have this discussion. But they become ridiculous, because 600,000 signatures are already a serious question. You’ll see that hundreds of mayoralties showed these things. Mayors showed that there were hundreds and hundreds of signatures that didn’t exist, they were falsified, some of them even submitted criminal complaints”, Catalin Radulescu stated on Wednesday at the Parliament.

The Social Democrat Catalin Radulescu, who is the new Quaestor of the Deputies’ Chamber, accused USR and PNL that now “criminals are crying no criminals”.

“You know what it’s like, criminals are crying ‘criminals!’. Both USR and PNL have criminal complaints and they are subject to criminal prosecution on everything related to the illegal funding at AEP’s request. These files are submitted for a few months ago, and prosecutors seem not to be interested in them. The criminals who are always crying ‘criminals!’ should resign. Secondly, there are criminal complaints submitted by many mayors in the country, which are also submitted to the Prosecutor’s Office, on obvious suspicions of defrauding the lists submitted at the Parliament b our USR colleagues. On the other hand, it was revealed in media, in fact I asked 5 or 6 months ago the Prosecution Office to take action on the phone conversation revealed in media between the USR members, who were talking between them how to falsify the signatures”, Radulescu added.

The PSD MP mentioned that the notification of the Standing Bureau is the result of the mayors’ notifications and of the check performed by the General Secretariat of the Deputies’ Chamber.

“The mayors’ check was made very clearly, by calling the person in question and asking him or her if they signed these lists. Therefore, having this obvious evidence and as a result of the checks performed by the General Secretariat of the Parliament for 3-4 months, the Standing Bureau of the Deputies’ Chamber was notified on these issues having a criminal nature. What we did in the Standing Bureau was to ask the USR representative exactly what they are asking for about two years, namely to accept these lists to be lists”, Catalin Radulescu concluded.

On September 21, 2018, USR submitted at the parliament the second part of signatures for the initiative “Fara penali in functii publice”, more than 780,000 signatures, thus fulfilling the conditions required by the law to initiate the referendum, namely 500,000 signatures from 21 counties.

The initiative “Fara penali in functii publice” proposes that Article 37 of the Constitution, which regulates the right to be elected, should be complemented with a new paragraph with the following content: “Citizens who are subject to a final sentence establishing punishments that involve deprivation of liberty for intentional offenses, cannot be elected in the local public administration bodies, the Deputies’ Chamber, the Senate and as the Romanian President, until a situation that removes the consequences of the conviction occurs”.

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